Marc Burch Meets the Press and Opens Up

by lgbt.soccer ·
Published February 28, 2013
· Updated February 28, 2013

At Tuesday’s training for the Seattle Sounders, defender Marc Burch took questions from reporters and was very candid about his suspension last year for using a gay slur.

March Burch (second from left) plays with a Seattle LGBT soccer club in December (Sean Gumm, The Stranger)

He said that his three game suspension for the incident in a November playoff game against Real Salt Lake was the “right decision” on the part of the league. While he acknowledges what he did, as we all know it’s not who he is, and he told reporters his sister is gay.

Burch went above and beyond the league fines, suspension, and mandated diversity training over the off-season. In December he played with a Seattle LGBT soccer club. They didn’t talk about what happened. They just played some soccer and got to know each other. I think this is stellar, and Marc and anyone who encouraged Marc to do this should be commended.

As a teammate of Robbie Rogers at the University of Maryland, Marc Burch also addressed Rogers’ coming out, hoping that his support–such as appearing in the video the Sounders produced–wasn’t solely a reaction to what happened last year. He also spoke about gay players in Major League Soccer in general:

“I think we’ll be the first league to definitely accept it,” Burch told reporters at Sounders training on Tuesday. “I think it will come and go a lot easier than people think. It’s going to happen, and I think this is a perfect league for it.”

The final game of Burch’s suspension will be this Saturday night’s season opener against the Montreal Impact.